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Occupy NATO

April 1, 2012

Peace activists from around Europe descended on NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on Sunday in a bid to breach the building as a protest against the military alliance's interventions in Afghanistan and Libya.

https://p.dw.com/p/14WAs
Police chase down activists attempting to scale a fence around NATO headquarters in Brussels on Sunday, April 1, 2012. More than 200 demonstrators were detained by police on Sunday after attempting to jump security fences surrounding NATO headquarters.
Image: AP

Hundreds of peace activists tried to storm the headquarters of the NATO military alliance in Brussels on Sunday, resulting in the arrests of 483 protesters by Belgian police.

The demonstration, organized by the Belgian association Action for Peace, was protesting against NATO's military interventions in Afghanistan and Libya as well as plans for a missile defense shield stationed in Europe.

"We neither want the anti-missile shield, nor intervention by NATO in Libya or Afghanistan, nor nuclear bombs that are illegal in our country," said Benoit Calvi, a spokesman for Action for Peace.

'Civil disobedience'

Between 500 and 600 police were deployed to counter the demonstration, a policeman told the news agency AFP.

"No demonstrator was able to enter NATO headquarters," Belgian police spokesman Christian De Coninck told AFP. "We detained 483 people for questioning and all of them should be free in the evening."

The demonstration, called "NATO Game Over," was organized ahead of NATO's May summit in Chicago. Activists attempted to enter NATO headquarters in a bid to symbolically shut it down.

"This is an act of civil disobedience," Roel Stynen of the peace organization Vredesactie told the Belgian news agency Belga. "We are committing a small offense to avoid a bigger one."

slk/pfd (AFP, dpa)